Star Trek: Voyager - 041 - The Eternal Tide Read online

“That was almost a good day,” she replied, obviously not interested in elaborating.

  Nancy’s sudden somber turn brought back vivid memories for Tom of Voyager’s particular corner of hell during the invasion, including coming within seconds of ramming a cube head-on. Between Chakotay’s near-incapacitating grief, the horror of learning of his father’s death, and the carnage at the Azure Nebula, Tom sometimes wondered how he, or anyone else, for that matter, had returned to anything resembling normal life in the succeeding months.

  “That’s the past,” Tom said, hoping to steer the conversation toward a more pleasant path. “A few days ago we saved almost fifty people from certain death and this morning we left them on a new world where they’ll have a real chance at watching their children grow up in peace. Not bad for a week’s work.”

  “And with the Borg little more than a memory, I’d say the future for this entire quadrant is looking up,” Harry agreed.

  “Tom can tell you, I started this week with a sick sense that we were going to find something a lot worse than the Tarkons out here. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be wrong,” B’Elanna added. Raising her wineglass she offered a toast. “To the future.”

  Tom and Harry immediately echoed her sentiment, and soon enough, Nancy did as well, but Tom couldn’t help but wonder at her reluctance. She’d always struck him as someone who lived very much in the moment, but he knew all too well that the past could be hard to live with and even harder to put behind you.

  • • •

  Seven of Nine was in the process of recording a lengthy personal log. Many of the insights that helped her process her transformation by the Caeliar had come through her work with Counselor Cambridge. Her initial contact with Riley—in their shared mental landscape of Axion—had been disquieting, but did not approach the trauma of her first visit. Meeting Riley in person and learning of her transformation experiences had brought Seven’s own painful memories of that event to the fore. Now, as she searched her feelings, any regrets she harbored about refusing a life among the Caeliar were surprisingly few. This pleased her, and she assumed it would also please Cambridge. Much as she wished to hold on to her anger with him for his insensitivity, Seven believed he had been candid about both his regard for her and his fears about pursuing a romantic relationship. Honesty was a solid place from which to build something deeper. Seven found herself anticipating their next meeting, though she wondered if he would be of more use to her as a counselor than a potential mate.

  As Seven struggled to order these thoughts in her personal log, her cabin door chimed. Without bothering to ascertain the identity of her visitor, she called, “Enter.”

  Chakotay stepped into her quarters, and Seven rose immediately to greet him.

  “Captain?”

  “As you were,” he said, smiling. “I just came by to see how you’re doing.”

  Seven returned his smile and left her workstation, offering him a seat in her quarters’ sitting area. The changes wrought in him after Admiral Janeway’s death had opened a chasm between them, and every bridge she attempted to build across it was soon set aflame. The lengths to which Chakotay had gone since then to resume their former relationship had comforted her greatly. She knew the captain had paid special attention to her interactions with Riley, and his concern now was what she expected in an old and trusted friend.

  “I am well,” she confirmed as she took the seat beside him, settling into a relaxed posture that matched his own.

  “Did you know what we would find at Arehaz?” Chakotay asked.

  “No,” Seven assured him. “I imagine it will take us years to determine the full extent of the changes brought about by the Caeliar. But thus far, they appear promising.”

  “We’ve all seen so much darkness in the last few years, it’s hard to accept that anything good will come from it.”

  “Do you still harbor doubts about the Caeliar?” she asked, surprised.

  “No,” Chakotay replied. “I believe what my eyes, and our sensors, are telling us. A part of me just keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  Seven nodded. “The Borg left technology on thousands of worlds in this quadrant. If all of them were transformed similarly to Arehaz, it is likely that there will be hundreds of newly inhabitable planets available for colonization.”

  “Which can only be a good thing, right?” the captain asked, more of himself than her.

  “Chakotay?”

  “Where there are valuable resources, there are often multiple groups willing to fight over them. I’d hate to see the quadrant devolve into numerous internecine struggles to claim those planets.”

  “Were you planning to add ‘keeping peace in the Delta Quadrant’ to our current mission parameters?”

  “Not our job, right?”

  “No,” she confirmed.

  “Do you think Riley and those families will be safe there for long?”

  “Arehaz is several thousand light-years from the nearest worlds inhabited by warp-capable species. By the time anyone else pushes that far into former Borg space, they will have developed sufficient means to defend themselves.”

  “Did Riley say that?” Chakotay asked, clearly troubled by the thought.

  “She sacrificed perfection to personally ensure the safety of those families. The Tarkons’ ability to surprise them and take them by force taught Riley a valuable lesson. They will never again make the mistake of leaving themselves defenseless, though I imagine that for the next several years, their focus will be on creating a sustainable existence. You don’t begrudge them the right to defend themselves?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “But you still don’t trust her?”

  “I don’t believe she has any aim toward galactic conquest,” the captain insisted. “But we’ve already discovered a few unusual uses for your catoms, and I have no doubts she and her people will explore theirs. . . . I don’t know,” he added with a shrug. “I guess I have a hard time trusting anyone who could violate me the way she did.”

  Seven wanted to reach out for his hand, but felt a sudden flush of hesitation. It had long ago been settled between them that their relationship was to be nothing more than friendship. Suddenly, it dawned on her how long it had been since he had shown an interest in any woman other than herself. His reaction to Janeway’s death had confirmed her long-held suspicion that his heart had always been hers, although as far as she knew, they had never taken their relationship beyond the platonic level. But her new interest in Cambridge, combined with her and Chakotay’s former, more intimate relationship, suddenly made her wary of sending any mixed signals.

  “I have decided to change the nature of my relationship with Counselor Cambridge,” Seven blurted out, and almost as quickly wished the statement unsaid.

  Clearly taken aback, Chakotay’s first response was a curious smile. “Okay,” he said slowly, as he studied her face more intently.

  “I don’t know why . . .” she began, then retreated, offering, “Not that it is anything you should be concerned about.”

  “Seven,” he said warmly, “it’s all right. I’m glad you feel that you can tell me.”

  “It is still possible nothing may come of it,” she went on, feeling more awkward by the moment.

  “Does Hugh know about this decision?” Chakotay asked, his eyes dancing with mischief.

  “Yes.”

  “And I take it he is amenable to the idea.”

  “I actually came to my decision based on what I sensed was his improper regard.”

  “Improper?”

  “Between a counselor and his patient,” she replied.

  “I see.” Chakotay nodded, still unable to wipe the smile from his face. “Well, that’s great, then.”

  “Do you really believe so?”

  Chakotay did her the courtesy of giving the matter a few moments of serious reflection. Finally he said, “Cambridge is unlike anyone I’ve ever met before, and it took me a long time to really
appreciate his complexities and idiosyncrasies. But I like him, and I trust him. I go to him when I need a sounding board. Of course, if things go badly, you’re going to put me in the awkward position of wanting to punch my ship’s counselor. But it wouldn’t be the first time, and it’s a choice only you can make. If that’s what your heart is telling you, you should listen.”

  Seven nodded, relieved by his candor. She had come to the same conclusion, but it did not alleviate her concerns for Chakotay.

  Finally, she took a deep breath and ventured, “And what about you?”

  Ever so briefly, a raw and wounded look crossed his face. As quickly as it had flared, it receded beneath the mask of reserved calmness that he had worn since taking command of Voyager.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It’s not my place—”

  “No,” Chakotay cut her off gently. “It is. Of course, it is.”

  “I have caused you pain, and that was not my intention,” Seven insisted.

  “You haven’t,” the captain said more intently. “I just don’t let myself think about it much.”

  “Since Kathryn’s death?” Seven asked.

  He nodded wordlessly.

  Conscious of his reluctance, but still curious, Seven asked, “Was the admiral aware of your feelings for her?”

  Chakotay nodded, then began softly, “A long time ago, I misunderstood a birthday gift. . . . It led to an awkward moment between us on the holodeck.” Seven noted the brief light this remembrance brought to his face as he cleared his throat and continued, “In the end it brought a lot of things that had been unsaid out into the open. At the time, we decided that our duties made it impossible for us to consider a relationship. We both moved on.” He paused, and the light slowly left his features. “About a year before she died, we met for dinner at Proxima Station. I was looking forward to catching up. Without duty to divide us, it seemed silly to keep avoiding what we both wanted, and one thing led to another. When Kathryn left, we agreed to meet again when Voyager returned from the Yaris Nebula. I waited at a café in Venice for her to arrive. I wanted to make it official and propose. She didn’t show up.”

  An unpleasant heat burned in Seven’s chest. Suddenly, the violent shift in Chakotay at Kathryn’s death became perfectly clear and took on contours of sadness she could barely fathom. Her eyes glistened. His pain echoed her own grief. Wounds she had long ago thought healed surfaced as fresh and deep as if they had just been cut.

  This time, she reached for his hand, and took it between hers. They sat for some time in comfortable silence, until the passage of time allowed for some relief and made speech again possible.

  “I still miss her,” Seven acknowledged quietly.

  “Every day,” Chakotay agreed. “I don’t honestly expect I’ll ever feel that way about anyone else.” Giving her hand a gentle squeeze, he added, “But she wouldn’t have wanted me to bury my hopes with her. If there is someone else out there for me, I’m sure I’ll find her, eventually. Until then, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.”

  Seven had once attempted to end her budding relationship with Chakotay based on the fear of what the loss of love might do to his heart. The Admiral Janeway who had come from the future to bring Voyager home had apparently lived that version of reality, and the thought of destroying Chakotay’s life had overwhelmed Seven’s desire to allow their relationship to develop. Chakotay had argued then that love always came with risks, but they were worth taking. Seven wondered if he would still offer the same counsel.

  She wanted to believe that he would, especially when she considered the precarious place her own heart now rested, in the hands of a man she barely knew. But as she searched Chakotay’s face for a sign of the hope he professed to feel, Seven found nothing but doubt.

  “Captain Chakotay to the bridge. We are receiving an emergency transmission from the Achilles. ”

  “On my way,” he replied. Rising, he turned back to her and said, “Like I said, plenty to keep me busy.”

  Seven smiled faintly as she nodded in farewell.

  Once he had left, her thoughts were too focused on what he had revealed for her to wonder what emergency Achilles might have encountered.

  • • •

  Chakotay spent the brief turbolift ride to the bridge clearing his mind. Reliving Kathryn’s death had again brought his grief surprisingly close to the surface. He knew better than to deny the pain. Solace would come in time and until it did, it was best to put one foot in front of the other.

  Striding briskly onto the bridge, Chakotay turned to Lieutenant Waters, currently manning the ops station, and said, “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  As he sat, the starfield on the main viewscreen was replaced by the harried visage of Commander Tillum Drafar. The transmission was garbled by static.

  “We have retrieved Captain Eden and her team . . . Mikhal Outpost . . . en route to rendezvous with Quirinal, Esquiline, Hawking . . . Cur . . . have received emergency distress call from Quirinal . . . transmitting new coordinates to you now . . . regroup as soon as possible . . . advised to approach immediate area impulse only . . . les out.”

  “Waters, do you have the new rendezvous coordinates?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “Conn, calculate a slipstream jump that will take us to within half a light-year of the coordinates. We’ll make our final approach at impulse. Waters, let me know the minute you’ve got Quirinal’s distress call.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “All hands, this is the captain. We are preparing to execute a slipstream jump to answer a distress call from Quirinal. Yellow Alert.”

  Chakotay settled in to wait. Last he’d heard, Quirinal was moving to regroup with Esquiline in order to investigate a spatial anomaly. His gut tightened as he wondered how things had gone wrong. The first part of his mission had been a success, tainted only by the engagement forced upon them by the Tarkons. But as the captain had been expecting since returning to the Delta Quadrant, the inevitable other shoe was now on its way down.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ACHILLES

  Kathryn Janeway wasn’t sure what she had been expecting when she left the Q Continuum. Her godson had told her he’d be sending her where she was needed most, and she had assumed that would be to Voyager. Her first sight of the room in which she appeared told her she was on a Starfleet vessel. The last she knew, Voyager was returning from a deep-space mission and could be near the Sol system. Counselor Cambridge should have been with them. The Doctor was supposed to be working with his creator, Lewis Zimmerman, at Jupiter Station. And Captain Eden rarely left her desk, let alone her office at Starfleet Headquarters.

  Where am I?

  Eden, who was visibly shaking, pushed herself off the biobed, dismissing Cambridge and the Doctor’s attempts to steady her. The captain stepped toward Janeway with the wariness of a hunter approaching a wild animal.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Really? Janeway wondered. But then, if images of what the Borg had done to her had already been transmitted throughout Starfleet, Eden was right to be on her guard.

  As calmly as she could, she said, “I am Admiral Kathryn Janeway.”

  This elicited a huff of what might have been amusement from Cambridge. He stood with his arms crossed at his chest.

  The Doctor immediately grabbed a medical tricorder and directed the device at her.

  “I realize you must be surprised to see me here, but I can explain, though I wouldn’t mind knowing where here is,” Kathryn added.

  Eden continued to stare at her with something just this side of terror. As the Doctor was checking his scans, Cambridge took the liberty of replying, “We are currently aboard the Federation Starship Achilles. At this moment we are in the Delta Quadrant, en route to rendezvous with several of the other vessels that comprise our exploratory fleet, of which Captain Eden is the fleet commander.”

  The counselor paused, perhaps hoping that this would rouse Eden, but when sh
e remained silent, he continued, “And Admiral Janeway died fourteen months ago. While I’ll admit the illusion you are creating is compelling, it hardly seems plausible. I don’t know who you or what you are, but I’m reasonably certain you are not our long-lost admiral.”

  “She is,” the Doctor said quietly, as if he didn’t actually believe what his scans were telling him.

  At this, Eden’s head jerked toward him. “How is that possible?” she demanded.

  The Doctor shrugged. “It isn’t. But down to the last fragment of genetic material, this woman is Kathryn Janeway.”

  “You kept her bioscans?” Cambridge asked.

  “Many of my former patients’ files remain stored in my long-term memory,” the Doctor replied.

  “And she’s alive?” Eden asked.

  “And in excellent health.” the Doctor nodded, still clearly doubting his scans.

  Eden turned back to Janeway, who was still trying to absorb Cambridge’s words.

  Fourteen months?

  Fourteen months!?

  And an unpleasant afterthought: The Delta Quadrant?

  “Can you explain how?” Eden asked, and Kathryn couldn’t help but note that Eden refused to address her by name.

  “Not all of it,” Kathryn replied. “But as to the living part, that was Q’s doing, and Kes’s.”

  The Doctor wasn’t programmed to cry, but Kathryn saw how much his parameters had expanded as his eyes glistened brightly. He closed the distance between them. “Kes?” he asked in wonder.

  Kathryn nodded as she met his look with tears forming in her own eyes. The Doctor steadied himself and said, “On stardate 51514.9, we were alone in the holodeck. You were trying to help me through a particularly difficult time.”

  “I remember,” Kathryn replied. An ethically impossible decision had forced the Doctor’s program into a cascade failure. After her initial reprogramming had failed, Janeway offered him friendship, support, and counsel, hoping that he would ultimately make peace with his choice. It had been an arduous but ultimately successful process.

  “You were reading a book. Do you remember its title?”